Perspectives from an English Historian who just happens to be Gay, Catholic, and a Democratic Socialist. Now back in the UK after 20 years of living in the United States. The Blog is eclectic in covering all these sides of my Life. Follow on Twitter at PaulBHalsall

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Tories and Class War

In response to a comment on Iain Dale's blog about my previous post.

I am old enough to have lived through and remember two periods of Tory rule - under Heath and under Thatcher/Major. Although Heath was, in retrospect, more moderate than Thatcher, the whole attitude of Tory governments is to oppose organized power among the working class (i.e Trade Unions) while to support organized power among elites (e.g. Public and Private companies).

While I think some respects Blair and Brown did do some good things - raise NHS spending, actively conciliate in Northern Ireland, enact partial legal equality for gay people (none of which would have been done under the Tories) - I also think New Labour loved business and markets far to much. This has lead to the refusal to renationalize rail, an obsession with false "internal" markets, and a completely catastrophic growth in unjustified administrative bodies devoted to naff business jargon ("stakeholders"/"evidence based"/"branding") and non-transparent "public consultations".

I detest New Labour.

But even New Labour's command and control administrative centralism has had a basically beneficent view of the poor and dispossessed, even if its solutions ("aspiration") are nonsense.

Tories will just attack, because it is they, much more than the modern Labour Party which wages class warfare.

The basic thing about class war is that the working class have never been very good at it. The financial elite have proved repeatedly they are very good at in indeed.